Could a DACA fix get done?

[Admin 174]

It remains to be seen whether Ryan will actually include a DACA fix in the December spending bill, and if so, what the fix will look like. Here, the 30 to 40 moderate House Republicans and the Big Five Republicans in the Senate (Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Bob Corker of Tennessee) can finally throw their weight around. Without those moderate House members and the Big Five, a budget won’t get passed. It is within their power to end the GOP’s torment of “dreamers,” get the president and their own party off the hook and demonstrate that not all Republicans are xenophobic captives of talk radio and Fox News.
House moderates and the Big Five should not overplay their hand. While funding for the wall is a non-starter, they would be wise to include a reasonable amount of funding for border security, but much more importantly, visa overstay prevention, which is a much bigger problem that President Trump routinely ignores.

This may mean that the House will need a large number of Democratic votes to pass a budget with a DACA fix included. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who runs her party with an iron fist, will no doubt be able to field a sufficient number of votes, but Ryan will need to then put to a vote a budget that many hard-liners in his party will oppose due to the DACA fix.

Now, passing a DACA fix might not be all that hard to accomplish. Once a few Republicans hop on the DACA-fix bandwagon, others will follow. In fact, some very conservative Republican senators (James Lankford of Oklahoma and Thom Tillis of North Carolina) already have introduced their own DACA fix.

The House will need to vote first on a spending legislation, but even if the DACA fix is not in that version, the Senate with an overwhelming show of support for DACA can send the spending legislation back with the DACA fix included, thereby forcing the House’s hand.

The irony should not be lost on the Trump cultists: The first true legislative achievement (besides confirming Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court) could very well be a massive, bipartisan spending bill with a giant provision for “amnesty” — the favorite word of anti-immigration advocates — to legalize 800,000 “dreamers” who came here as children, through no fault of their own. And if that weren’t sweet enough for Trump’s opponents, the second legislative accomplishment might be passage of the Alexander-Murray health-care bill to stabilize Obamacare. Trump would then be able to congratulate himself for his brilliance (He has an Ivy League education, don’t you know?) in accomplishing what President Barack Obama could not — a permanent DACA fix and a new lease on life for the Affordable Care Act. Someone will need to break the news to Stephen K. Bannon and Attorney General Jeff Sessions — two of the leaders of the anti-immigrant chorus — that Trump is either the world’s worst negotiator or snookered them both by posing as an anti-immigrant hawk.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/10/26/could-a-daca-fix-get-done/?utm_term=.5d868117b8b5